Here we go again, my darlings. Just a little warning: this chapter's got gore. I don't think it's quite bad enough to raise the rating (although please let me know if you disagree), but things are about to get somewhat gruesome and bloody and I really think you all should have a heads-up about that. Reader discretion advised and whatnot.
Chapter 6: The Forest
Dib stared fixedly at the spot where the shadow had appeared.
Every Robert Frost-esque thought that had graced his mind before fled Dib like so many birds. Whatever duct in his brain pumped out "fear" heaved in exhaustion as he tried to memorize where the thing had stood.
Veering away from his car, Dib dashed across the lawn and headed into the tree line. The woods were barely sheltering - every frozen wind and beam of bleached light reached him through the spindly branches. If anything he felt cornered.
"Is there anybody here?" he called lamely, rattling his aching head as he looked desperately around the forest for any sign of life. Leaves and mud caked themselves onto his boots as he tried to slog deeper without a path.
The wind picked up a bit. Above him the trees moaned creakily, bending in the same direction as the sudden storm of leaves that filled the whole forest with twitching movement. Dib felt his coat flutter around him as he walked among the wind and the trees.
With a sudden crunching crack, a branch worked its way free and fell to the ground a few dozen feet away from him. Dib watched it smack against a few other trees as it tumbled down. And then he watched it gather to its six-ish long legs and rear up to a height a little greater than his own.
It didn't disappear.
It fled.
Dib tore after it.
Running through trees proved much trickier than sprinting across pavement - he found himself ducking under low tree limbs, getting stuck in rocky holes and skidding across hidden muddy patches. Always the monster was just beyond him. Skittering swiftly across the forest floor, but rarely faltering in its step.
He could see it more clearly now in the daylight. Not perfectly - his fogged glasses and ragged breath made note-taking a little difficult - but he could make out the nearly-black body. Clustered, pointed legs leveraged off of trees and every once and a while the thing turned a wide, dark eye to him.
Something about it didn't look right. Zim or not. There was a smallness, a weakness there that he hadn't noticed before in his handful of sightings.
You're the hunter now. Of course it doesn't look the same as when it was chasing you. Of course it doesn't look the same as when it was hiding behind road signs. Of course it doesn't look the same as when it was an alien living down the street. Now stop thinking and hunt!
Dib took the order. He heaved himself over a boulder, landing hard as the shuddering force of impact rocketed through his right leg. Scrambling to his feet, he scraped one hand open on a tree branch. Damp wetness streaked down his fingers, breadcrumbing blood behind him as he chased the dark figure.
The joints he'd used yesterday screamed in protest at his speed. He felt his muscles and tendons snap against his bones like cheap rope. Dib locked his eyes on the fleeing monster, breath coming in aching snarls, mind empty of words but full of pulsing instincts. A heat had blossomed somewhere deep within him that launched him forward despite each physical complaint. An awakening that had lain dormant for years.
Dib had to catch it. He had to lay his hands on its shoulders and twist it around and know. He loved the paranormal because it begged to be explained. He'd always been the one screaming to know what was in the briefcase in Pulp Fiction, demanding for a non-ambiguous interpretation of "the Lady and the Tiger." Never satisfied with uncertainty. If he ran a little faster, strode a little longer, there would be one less mystery in the world.
One less to torment him.
The thing skittered sideways as one leg landed in a mud puddle, pivoting on the stuck limb before wresting itself free in a panicked frenzy and slipping through two tightly-placed trees. Dib dodged around, too wide to risk following it. A yard or two was lost in the detour but the shadow stayed in sight. With an obscene sucking sound he stomped into the spot of mud and freed himself in a single fluid motion.
Trees flew past. Branches snagged and tore at his clothes. Leaves clung to his boots and got caught in the strap of his messenger bag. All without Dib's notice. Even as his feet pounded onto packed, bare ground instead of leaf mulch. Even as the trees thinned to nothing.
As Dib broke the tree line his focus was only on the evading shadow. It nearly fell onto clearing, legs splayed awkwardly for a split second. The monster-hunter within Dib saw the hesitation, the pause, and took it. He launched himself forward, dirt flying free of the packed earth. Five fingers closed around one of the surprisingly warm, stalk-like legs. He had it.
It slipped through his sweat-and-bloodied hand and was gone.
In the time it took Dib to reorient himself, to regain his balance from the lost grasp and shifted weight, the thing vanished through the trees. He saw it sneak speedily away through his peripheral vision as he avoided face-planting into the soil.
Dib pulled himself to his full height, his hair-spike whistling through the air as he tried desperately to regain sight of the thing. His grab had been stupid and impulsive and he should have known better, damn it. He opened his mouth to swear but screamed instead.
The scene before him unfolded with increasingly finer details, like an Escher painting. A single tree occupied the center of the clearing, bearing jagged branches that jutted into space more like broken bones than lace.
A man was impaled on the lowest limb. There was a snapped branch emerging from his chest where his sternum should have been. Bloodied shards of wood littered the ground beneath in gravestone-like clusters. Dib felt a sticky dryness in his half-open mouth as he stared at the gaping stomach, organs spilled onto the ground like streamers and skin delicately pinned back with pointed sticks.
The meaty smell of decomp crammed itself into Dib's nostrils - it worked its way into his pores and became a coating more than an odor. The smell did it for him, although the agonized, unfocused stare on the man's face was little help. Dib felt bile pressing against his throat and fell to his knees and retched onto the forest floor. A pilgrim kneeling at the base of an altar to the grotesque.
When he looked up again the body was still there. Still rent open like a fish. His gaze slid downward from the glazed eyes to the burst chest to the I.D. badge and one missing leather shoe. Dib recognized the uniform. This was a Swollen Eyeball, just like him. The one Tunaghost had mentioned.
He'd survived eighteen days after taking his case. Dib wondered how much longer he had.
Tearing his eyes away from the name badge disturbingly like his own, Dib stared at the ground. At the base of the tree a corner of folded paper jutted from a jellied pile of nestled organs.
He tried to think about the first day of summer. Snow falling softly outside as he sat behind the living room window with a cup of hot chocolate. Looking up into the clear night sky and seeing a star he'd never noticed before. Dib forced his brain into some other calm and safe place where his hand wasn't digging around inside an eviscerated man's intestines for a piece of paper.
The sheet fell open in his hands, half-soaked with blood and serum. It took a second or so of staring before he could shake the savage image from his mind and read the words. It took him several seconds more to realize that the symbols weren't in English. Blocky, geometric hieroglyphics he'd seen before: the words were Irken.
Dib's head ached loudly, blood rushing and pooling in his ears as he looked up at the thick and crusted crimson splattered a few feet beyond him. The paper crunched under his stiff fingers.
It wasn't real. It couldn't be. Another hallucination.
He pulled himself unsteadily to his feet. Wiped a line of saliva and cluster of tears from his face with one dirty sleeve. His mouth was sticky and foul-tasting, the cold air aching his teeth as he breathed. With shaking fingers, Dib reached out and touched the edge of the skewered man's jacket. The fabric was damp and coarse.
The body released a scraping, hissing moan. Dib jerked his head up in horror and watched as the man's grey eyes dilate aimlessly. He stumbled backward, tripping on what he prayed wasn't entrails, a soft whimper escaping.
Look, I don't give a shit if this is real life or not. Call 911. Right. Now.
Dib fumbled stupidly for his cell phone before remembering that it was smashed to pieces on the sidewalk in front of his home. His sore brain cast about for the nearest gas station, pay phone, something.
His car. His car parked in front of the Finch house. She would have a phone.
Eager to get away from the reeking spectacle, Dib turned and sprinted back through the forest. His feet fell mechanically onto the ground. He stumbled and corrected himself with sluggish, instinctive motions - every cell on autopilot as he made his way back. If there had been a Bigfoot running next to him Dib wouldn't have seen it. His retinas registered the trees but the murder scene (what else could it be?) loomed so largely in his mind that there was no room for any other thought.
It hung there, branded, amidst the chaos of his migraine. The carefully peeled flesh, the muted pale of a body sans most of its blood. Dib knew a vivisection when he saw one. Someone had leaned over that man and carved him up as he screamed himself into insanity.
Oh, right. Because we don't know anyone who's capable of that, do we, Dib?
"Shut the hell up!" Dib panted, each word emphasized by a gasp as he ran. This had gone beyond chasing shadows in the forest. Beyond stalkers in his window. Dib brooded over the Irken message crumpled in his pocket. No amount of running was going to get him clear of the clusterfuck he'd gotten himself into.
The distance back to his car seemed much further than it had when he was chasing down the specter. He finally broke the tree cover, heel grinding into the Finch's driveway as he thundered up the stairs and pounded on the front door. An eternity passed as he waited for the shuffled banging of another person.
Finally the screen creaked open an inch.
"Oh, I'm sorry. Did you forget something?" Mrs. Finch asked politely, but in his agitated state Dib found that her patience did little to calm him.
"No. I need to use your phone. It's an emergency." He spoke as evenly as he could - partly to avoid upsetting her, and partly because he knew if he raised his volume at all he would scream.
"Of course. It's in the kitchen."
There must have been something about Dib's posture or expression that convinced her, because she nearly leapt out of his way as he shoved his way into the house. Any of the smells or knick-knacks that had caught his eye before became background noise as he walked stiffly to the kitchen and picked up the telephone receiver.
The 911 dispatcher was surprisingly helpful, especially compared to all the other times Dib had called it. Then again, this time he was reporting a murder rather than a toilet-haunting ninja ghost. He found himself stuttering and pausing when the lady at the other end asked him to "describe the scene." Every detail of the gore had been etched permanently into his brain, but explaining it to a stranger over the phone felt obscene and irreverent.
Finally they had enough information. Promised to send a police officer and an ambulance. Dib hung up the phone, wondering if Mrs. Finch had heard him explain the crime scene that lurked in her backyard. She seemed to have disappeared into the house somewhere; he was keenly aware that he'd eventually need to go speak to her. Picking up the receiver again, Dib dialed his home's number.
"What?" came the growl of Gaz's voice. Despite her harshness, Dib felt a hiccup of relief break over him like warm water - the knowledge that his sister was still herself was some small comfort in the discord. In his mind's eye he saw her reading comic books on her bed, rubbing her nose with an ink-stained hand.
"Gaz, I need you to get something out of my room and meet me in town. It's very, very important, okay? This case is screwed up - people are getting hurt- and I think that Zim has something to do with it."
"Zim? Zim is gone, Dib. You saw to that yourself." She spoke with slow deliberation, as if explaining quantum physics to a dog. "And you're right, that case is hurting people. Because it's making you act insane like you did back in middle skool and I'm going to pummel you over it if you don't shut your crazy-spouting mouth."
"I know it sounds nuts. I really do, Gaz" (he really did. Dib felt the corners of his mind curl up like peeling wallpaper as he tried to comprehend the past 24 hours) "and I'm sorry to keep bothering you. But I really, really need for you to go into my room and go to the bottom left drawer on my desk and get out the third red disk that you see because-"
"Are you fucking serious! It's Saturday! I am TRYING to enjoy my weekend, and I don't need any of your big-headed paranormal bullshit messing it up. You already took the car, and now you expect me to bring you your X-ray binoculars or some shit? You better be kidding me, Dib, or so help me-"
Dib felt his former sense of relief melt away into an eruptive anger. One he usually kept well in check. "I am not fucking kidding, Gaz! Did it ever occur to you that maybe some of this is important? I've spent the last five years trying to keep my mouth shut for your sake but I'm not going to dumb myself down again. I'm scared, Gaz. If I don't solve this case, if I don't figure out what's going on...you're going to end up taking me to the Crazy House or the morgue."
A pause. He could hear Gaz's rasped, angry breathing on the other end of the line. Dib waited for a dial tone, fully prepared to smash the receiver down in frustration. Then, finally:
"We're going to Bloaty's. And we're going to get bacon and jalapeno. You're going to pay. And you're going to drop me back off at the house." She said shortly.
"Sure. Absolutely. It's a deal. I'll meet you in an hour take a knife with you don't go in the forest-" The dull beeping cut him off mid-rushed-sentence. Dib snapped the receiver back into its home.
I guess there was some language in there too. Whoops. Sorry about that. So what do you think? A bit much? Not enough? Let me know in a review! And thanks for reading, everyone. The other day my "hit" counter was "666" for an hour or so, it made me feel kind of awesome and evil and warm-fuzzy all at once. Probably you're supposed to be medicated for that, but oh well.